Monday, June 16, 2014

Jo Nova has a series of posts on the apparent discovery of a "notch filter" mechanism in the Earth's climate system, that doesn't do anything positive, but only negates, quite improbably, an "expected" dependence of the global mean surface temperature on the total solar irradiation (TSI). I submitted the following:It is just too pat (i.e., characterized by a highly improbable "coincidence"): You find the temperature doesn't follow the 11-year solar cycle of TSI; now you find that something (apparently, the Sun's magnetic field) is cancelling that "expected" following--with an improbable, 11-year delay, just the same period as the solar cycle--so there is no 11-year cycle in the (global mean surface) temperature (GMST). Considered logically, without regard for any existing theories or common assumptions, by far the simplest, and therefore most probable reason for this "dog that doesn't bark" is that the expectation of a GMST dependence upon TSI is wrong (the dog doesn't bark because there is no dog, or nothing for the dog to bark at, after all).Everybody wants to ignore the definitive Venus/Earth temperatures comparison I performed in late 2010, and what it indicates for the correction of climate science. Above all, in the present context, it indicates that the troposphere is fundamentally warmed--globally(!)--to the Standard Atmosphere profile (which represents the real, equilibrium vertical profile of the atmosphere, as the Venus/Earth comparison quantitatively and precisely demonstrates), by direct absorption of incident solar radiation, not by heat from the separately warmed surface. But of course that does not mean the TSI, which includes the major portion that warms the surface; it means just that incident portion (obviously in the infrared) which is directly absorbed by the troposphere! Climate and other atmospheric scientists need to identify that portion; I expect it will be found that it simply does not vary according to the 11-year solar cycle.